Jan Assmann.

Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and

Political Imagination. Cambridge UK, etc.: Cambridge University Press; 2011. ISBN
978-0-521-18802-9. $29.99.

The importance of Jan Assmann’s numerous forays into historical thinking, historical
consciousness and religious spirituality has become known recently to a wide body of
contemplators of the human condition. It has been, however, a slow process, owing
to the gradual decline of German as an international language. It is not surprising
that many advances in our knowledge have been impeded by the dearth of
international scholarship written in languages other than English. This is sometimes
encountered in the Anglo-American world owing to its present linguistic dominance.
One particular case involves the post Logico-Positivistic school of English speaking
philosophers, another is the virtual absence of Luhmannian Sociology among the
same speaking community. The same may be said for Assmann’s work in
Geistgeschichte and the communality of human remembrance. This recent translation
of his 1992 volume, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität
in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich: C. H. Beck; 1992), is yet another example where
Egyptologists may have read the original, but few outside Assmann’s original field of
expertise knew of it, owing to the ever-present monolingual attributes of modern
Americans.1 Fortunately, this criticism can now be deflected, owing to the excellent
translation ability of Henry Wilson, who, surprisingly, is not given credit on the title
page.2 This is a serious error on the part of the publisher.
To review such a work after reading the original so many years ago, as well as
covering the follow-up studies on Cultural Memory by the same author, has been a
pleasant experience to this writer. By affording us glimpses, detailed to be sure, of the
human structure of memory as revealed mainly in writing, Assmann’s studies,
though somewhat dated now, nonetheless can be viewed as a history of the concept
of the social and political imagination of remembrance. Hence, it cannot be usefully
criticized from the vantage point of the presence or absence of this or that reference,
or an ensuing scholarly disputation, and the like. A different approach is necessary.
Assmann commences his work by providing the reader with his two main
predecessors, Maurice Halbwachs and Jan Vansina. By and large, it is the former that
occupies Assmann’s time. The research connection of Halbwachs to the Holy Land,
Jerusalem, was by no means an outlying interest of that sociologist. However, it
provided Assmann with a helpful entry into the vagaries of the ars memoriae that the
Greeks, Hebrews and the Egyptians practiced. Useful criticisms are made in this
book of the wrong-headed hypotheses of Eric A. Havelock’s hyper-philohellenic

1
One can, however, refer to the English edition of Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies,
trs. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford: Stanford University Press; 2006). Cf. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young,
“Memories of the Nile: Egyptian Traumas and Communication Technologies in Jan Assmann’s
Theory of Cultural Memory,” New German Critique 96 (2005) 103-33.
2
I have caught only one slip: “Armana” for “Amarna” (p. 194, n. 48).

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argumentations, least of all of that author’s inability to grasp the simple fact that all
cultures formulated “history” and, indeed, talked if not wrote incessantly about it.3
The relationship of written communication, constrained within the boundaries of
historical consciousness — for is that not what history reflects? — comes to the fore
within this presentation, and Assmann does not shirk from the aim of his endeavor in
an effort to acquaint us with the most disparate methods of the human memory.
Although psychological ramifications are, for the most part, left aside — this work is,
after all, a hallmark of a literary specialist — Assmann presents his evidence in an
almost effortlessly way. The importance of culture for human survival, and by this I
mean in the “correct” Darwinian way, is not explained thoroughly. Whereas
Assmann sees with clarity the necessity of memory for cultural transmission over
generations and its great significance in the preservation of one’s individual and/or
corporate identity, he seems to avoid linking those perceptions with their primary
causes. If in Chapter 5 ancient Israel is associated with the “invention of religion,”
this is not proven because the author believes that modern religion commenced there.
In fact, Assmann places his religious sensibilities upon transcendence instead of
immanence, and sees the latter as reflecting the primary aims of cosmotheism and the
former, for him the more significant of the two, to be a product of monotheism.
Here we must sidestep these issues because they are primarily ones of personal
nuances and feelings. That is to say, the fair critic comes away from reading this
book with the distinct impression that Assmann has mastered many a philosophic
and religious approach without bothering to examine the core data of history; namely,
the multifarious traces of humanity’s records about itself. The author’s reliance on a
few secondary sources — first rate to be sure — most certainly will annoy and
frustrate the open-minded historian. For example, Assmann repeats himself by
including many scholarly references that he has done over many years. The
discussions centered on Hittite historiography depend, as I have come to expect, a
great deal upon Hubert Cancik, Assmann’s former colleague at Heidelberg. (The
same may be said with regard to Assmann’s views on Cicero and Varro.) The
connections between ethnic consciousness, the use of memory (both oral and written)
and the power sense of a blind destructive monotheism — Christianity and Islam
come to mind — are never explored. The dangers of the Prophet, as well as the
Revolutionary, in contrast to the statesman, are shunned.4 Thus on the issue of an
“Ecumenical Age,” Eric Vogelin, a continuator of Arnold Toynbee, receives credit;
modern Roman historians are avoided (p. 208). With regard to Christianity, has not
Greg Wolf said it all: “The pagan gods did not wither away, they were murdered.”5
In one way this scintillating study remains, as Assmann’s non-Egyptological
works evince, an avoidance of terra firma. Instead, we are transported to a land in the

3
Havelock’s understanding of ancient scripts and their languages is naïve, to say the least. At the
minimum, there was little effort expended by him upon ancient (or modern) Chinese; the same may be
said with regard to cuneiform scripts (Akkadian, Sumerian or Hittite, to list three prominent
examples). This scholar lacked basic socio-historical training.
4
Classically, Henry Kissinger, The World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-
22 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin; 1957).
5
Greg Wolf, “How a man can be a god,” Times Literary Supplement 5689 (April 13 2010) 25.

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clouds where no great cleavages and vicious destruction and human extirpation are
allowed to be discussed. True, the idolatry of the Egyptians can be contrasted with
the “pure” if sterile concentration upon “the one,” whether it be reflected in the Old
Testament, Schiller, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, etc. Yet the wars of religion that such
a simple premise engendered, and still do, are shunned. It is as if we see Athens from
the eyes of Socrates and not dramatically from the pen of Thucydides or humorously
reflected in the plays of Aristophanes. I myself have frequently found myself
wondering why Assmann shuns conflict. Yes, there is fine detail provided by the
author when he sketches the different “memory figures of confrontation” between
Egypt and Israel (mythic to be sure) on page 189. But what about the rampant
warfare engendered by the expanding Israelites and directed again the local
Canaanites? Or the virulent hatred shown to Akhenaton by his immediate successors.
Of course, such a perspective would entail the examination of the archaeological and
historical data to such a minute degree that Assmann’s themes would quickly be
submerged by the historical data. It is as if for history writing Hegel instead of Ranke
were preferred.
On the other hand, the reader interested in the twin issues of Egypt, its
religion as seen from the outside, and the comparison between Egyptian monotheism,
brief though it was, and that of the Hebrews can turn to his work with profit. After all,
Assmann has provided his audience with two previous exemplary studies on these
issues: Moses the Egyptian and the study on Jehova-Isis;6 Indeed, there is a third that is
also applicable to the themes of this “memory book.”7 But it is when we follow
Assmann far away from his overarching concept of Cultural Memory that, I fear, the
voyage risks foundering. How much is ancient Greece to be credited with
“disciplined thinking,” part of the title to the final chapter, for example, and not also
to other peoples? What does “disciplined” mean, and how was that stricture applied
in antiquity? Concrete evidence of a more sizeable nature is needed to support this
hypothesis. Perhaps the “birth of history,” whatever that means, was a product of the
“spirit of the law,” and thus is applicable to the spiritual nature of the ancient
Hebrews, and just possibly for the Greeks, but do not these universalistic claims lack
evidence? We need to embark on a far-ranging historical trip through space and time
to see how amorphous many of Assmann’s seminal presentations are. This is not to
say that he subscribes to many of these generalizations. Yet the absence of much
evidence — historical analysis is sparsely presented in the footnotes — combined
with his overly extensive historical purview lead me to wonder whether this
grandiose effort needed a series of empirically fixed points in order to support the far-
ranging presuppositions offered.

6
Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge MA: Harvard University
Press; 1997); and “Jehova-Isis; the Mysteries of Egypt and the Quest for Natural Religion in the Age
of Enlightenment,” in Irene A. Bierman (ed.), Egypt and the Fabrication of European Identity (Los
Angeles: UCLA Near East Center Colloquium Series; 1995) 35-95.
7
Herrschaft und Heil: politische Theologie in Altägypten, Israel und Europe (Munich: C Hanser; 2000).

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Assmann’s study on Cultural Memory provides a stepping-stone to his further

temporal and spatial disquisitions. But the latter can be questioned, if merely from an
empirically-minded historian. We have been given a sparkling edifice of ancient and
modern historical thinking, but lacking are the sources. To this critic that was to be
expected. After all, when one is in the clouds of thought stubbing a toe on reality
seems puerile and insignificant. But even Mary Baker Eddy realized life from such an
incident. I enjoy the intellectual exercise practiced by Assmann, but I need more fare,
historically speaking. Perhaps the author’s desire to separate the volume into two
parts, with “the theoretical basis,” Cultural Memory, placed first, made excellent
sense. On the other had, the second part, “Case Studies,” presents a different aspect
which, to be sure, is connected with the earlier section. Yet is there only a small
thread which connects the former to the latter? Although Assmann’s personal
expertise is reflected in Egypt (Chapter 4), and his life-long juxtaposition of that
culture’s edifices of memory (pyramids, tombs) or culturally prominent literary texts
(wisdom literature, liturgies) is always enjoyable to read, even if one disagrees with
his wide-sweeping conclusions, it remains the case that he repeatedly juxtaposes
pharaonic civilization with that of ancient Israel and Greece, in this work and
elsewhere.
Hence, the reader must be aware of this author’s intentions and methods of
research. An expert can scoff at the statement that “The outstanding feature of the
Egyptian late period temple is probably its richness of décor” (p. 161), for which
there is no proof. But Assmann’s subsequent discussion of temple requirements or
temple law plus the societal aspects of this phase of Egyptian culture is what matters.
Equally, one might question the entire scheme devoted to the “legacy of Moses,” and
argue that all of this is post-Exilic reconstruction, aimed at sustaining a greatly
weakened people with a new identify, indeed a rebirth. Yet modern archaeological
research has effectively provided a major refutation of earlier Biblical historians’
reconstruction of ancient pre-Solomonic Hebrew society. Therefore, questions
surround Assmann’s understanding of the role of Cultural Memory in Israel during
the latter half of the first millennium BC.
But it is within the theoretical-sociological dimension of Cultural Memory,
covered in Part I, that Assmann excels. He has proven to be more than a continuator
of Maurice Halbwachs, and even if his contribution in the Alexandrian orientation of
the edited volume by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning, Cultural Memory Studies: An
International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter; 2008),
remains small, his importance is far greater than would be realized by the
introductory researcher. Truly, after Halbwachs, and with Vasina in between, Jan
Assmann looms prodigiously.
ANTHONY SPALINGER
DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS AND ANCIENT HISTORY
UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

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